Convergences between East and West: Tradition and Modernity in Sex Roles in Sweden,Finland and the Soviet Union

Abstract

Changes in the participation of men and women in the agricultural and nonagricultural labor force during the 20th century, the present division of household tasks at home, and sex role attitudes are examined in Sweden, Finland and the Soviet Union. Time and rate of industrialization, economical and ideological factors arc used as explaining factors.

There has not been any equivalent to the Swedish “return home ”movement among women in the 1930's in Finland and the Soviet Union. The proportion of women working in nonagricultural occupations has in these two countries been steadily increasing simultaneously with the decreasing proportion of women working in agriculture.

The increasing employment of women has not had a great influence on the division of labor at home, which in these three countries shows an almost universal-looking pattern, even though the proportion of working wives in the samples varied.

Sex role attitudes in Finland have, during the latter part of the 1960's, moved in a more egalitarian direction, partly because of a radical sex role discussion in the mass media. The attitudes of the rural population show a pattern of traditional egalitarianism which is not found in Sweden.